Networks have now begun to acquire the reputation for stability and security necessary to support increasing levels of consumer purchasing activity. In line with the growth in electronic commerce is the increasing availability of products which include digital content, such as digital music, on-line books, documents, software, and data.
Most of the available digital content products, especially those purchased and distributed electronically, have a fixed configuration, or at best, a fairly limited number of alternatives. Each of the available configurations is built ahead of the time it is needed, with the consumer choosing from a limited list of the offerings at the point of purchase. While it may be possible to build individually-selected configurations on an as-needed basis, such activity tends to use more computing resources than the commonly available “point-and-click” downloading process.
Examples of this set of circumstances abound. CD ROMs are typically supplied in an album configuration, including a fixed number of songs; usually from 10-15. Software packages are configured as an “office”, including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, publishing, and other programs, possibly offered in a “Professional” version in addition to the “Basic” version. Various collections of games are bundled into packages. In each case, the potential consumer has either no choice, or a very limited choice of alternatives made available at a fixed price, ultimately resulting in no sale for the distributor, or a purchasing consumer that ends up buying more than he wants or needs.
Limited numbers of product configurations are preferred for several reasons. The chief among these being that inventory costs are less; a distributor needs only to manage a limited number of stock keeping units (SKUs), linked to some number of pricing options. Not only is there overhead associated with each SKU, which is unique to a particular product configuration, but a limited number of SKUs also makes it easier for humans to understand and deal with customer support issues, including software upgrades, for example.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for an apparatus, an article including a machine-accessible medium, a system, and a method of configuring and pricing digital content which provides the flexibility desired by consumers, without generating an inordinate amount of unique configuration information which is difficult to assimilate, process, and maintain. Thus, such an apparatus, article, system and method should operate to generate a large number of potential configurations using a minimal starting data set. In addition, it would be desirable to retain configuration information as an integral part of each generated configuration, in order to simplify upgrade and/or additional purchase activity.